photo book Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Ashley Hackshaw / Lil Blue Boo

I love my Mac. I really, really love my Mac. I love iPhoto. I love Photo Booth. I love iWeb. It makes everything so easy because all the different programs “talk” to each other. Today I realized that I probably need a memory upgrade. I guess having over 4,000 photos and a couple hundred hours of home movies has started to slow down my trusty little computer. That 4,000 doesn’t even include anything from 2007. I already archived those on DVD and sent them to my husband’s office in case the house burns down!

Sorry, this post is starting to sound like a Mac commercial.

Now the real reason for this post….Mac photo books. I love how easy these books are to make and the quality is unbelievable. Once I set the book up by clicking and dragging photos and adding some text, I hit the button “Buy Book” and the published photo book magically shows up on my doorstep a few days later. (Okay, so I had to enter some credit card and shipping information when I first set up my Mac two years ago.) I use iPhoto to make a memory book for Sienna’s grandparents each Christmas. I include all my favorite photos, Sienna’s scanned artwork, and excerpts from my journal.

If you don’t know me then you don’t know that I am obsessively organized. I save everything, label everything, file everything, write down lists of everything….I have notebooks, upon notebooks of stuff. I just have this “thing” about preserving a story, a legacy….it is super-crazy-OCD-nostalgia (read my 2003 artist statement and you’ll see how out of hand it gets at times). When it comes time to put the photo book together each year I have a really hard time narrowing down what to include….I almost have a nervous breakdown when doing it because I just want to include every memory, minute-by-minute. In a perfect world my yearly photo book would be 10,000 pages long (and would probably cost $10,000).

Below are some excerpts from the 2008 book. I couldn’t post the whole thing because it was just too large a file. I hope it will give you some ideas for your own book.
Excerpts From Sienna 2008 Book

If you don’t have a Mac you can download software products such as My Publisher or Kodak Gallery to make a similar photo book. There are so many different things you can do with these programs. Here are just a few ideas….please share more if you have them!

Child’s Art Portfolio: Scan all your children’s drawings and artwork. Add titles, dates and descriptions.

Family Recipe Book: Take pictures of all your favorite dishes and include the recipes.

Story Book: Let your child draw the pictures and dictate the story to you.

Memorial Book: When my grandfather died I took all the best pictures of his infectious smile, the ones with his funny hat, with his roses etc and made huge displays for his wake so that everyone could remember him that way. My next project is to make all of those into a book with the beautiful eulogy quoted throughout.